To Find a Redheaded Paranomal Expert
by L.Hawk
Summary: When a case requires him to catch a suspect that's not human, Pickle Inspector, at the behest of Diamonds Droog, heads to a shady back alley clinic to meet the brilliant young man who supposedly frequents it. If there's a crazy pseudo-doctor and a zombie without a name involved, well that's not Diamond's fault, it it?


Pickle Inspector looked over the crime scene carefully, looking for potential clues. The twitchy shopkeeper stood nearby watching him. He had called Pickle Inspector because things kept disappearing from his store. He had called the police, but they had dismissed the case once they looked at his security tapes and saw that there was no evidence of crime to be found. The twitchy shopkeeper watched Pickle Inspector carefully. Finally he spoke. "Well, is there anything you can do?"

Pickle Inspector thought for a moment. He wasn't particularly well versed in supernatural cases, but he did know a thing or two, and he was sure he could learn. He had expected to see something of a curious nature today, given what he had been observing, and he felt himself more than ready to take the case. "I believe I might be able to apprehend the subject. Give me a few days, and I'll report back to you. We can discuss payment then."

The twitchy shopkeeper nodded gratefully. "Thank you, Inspector."

Just then, the bell above the door rang, and Diamonds Droog stepped into the shop, wearing a suit and carrying his pool cue in a vaguely threatening manner. The twitchy shopkeeper gulped. "I'm sorry Mr. Droog, I should have come to drop of the payment earlier, but I was distracted…" He trailed off as Diamonds stared at him. "Right, I'll just go get the money." He turned and made his way into the back room, his twitching growing worse than before. Pickle Inspector stayed just long enough to give Diamonds a reproachful look.

As Pickle Inspector thought about the case though, he realized that Diamonds could be a valuable source of information. He was worth asking in any event, since Pickle Inspector couldn't think of anyone else to talk to at the moment. The best part was, the mobster's natural curiosity would be enough to compel him to talk to the Inspector. All Pickle Inspector had to was be somewhere that Diamonds would come looking for him. Fortunately, he knew just the place.

After Diamonds Droog finished his weekly collections, he began to reflect on what Pickle Inspector had been doing in that particular store. It was not a store he frequented; Droog knew all of those from stalking careful observation. Plus, Pickle Inspector and the twitchy shopkeeper had seemed to have the air of people conducting negotiations, which he had picked up on right away, being someone who made his living with clandestine dealings. Against his better, he decided to seek the Inspector out, because he knew exactly where Pickle Inspector would be.

Whenever Diamonds Droog and Pickle Inspector needed to have any sort of conversation, Pickle Inspector could always be found at a small café on the east side of Midnight. Diamonds had a sneaking suspicion that Pickle Inspector waited for him there, but he had no proof either way, and he had long ago to simply add it to the list of things he would never understand about the Inspector. Of course, if the inspector wasn't there, something he tried to tell himself was a distinct possibility, he would have to go straight back to the secret hideout and track Pickle Inspector down tomorrow; Hearts would be wanting his help with dinner soon, and Clubs would be worrying about him needlessly, which would put Spades in a bad mood.

Diamonds needn't have worried. When he arrived at the café, Pickle Inspector was sitting at a table outside, sipping a cup of tea, and watching for him. The inspector had even taken the liberty of ordering Diamonds a cup of coffee, which was sitting across from him at the table. Diamonds ground his teeth. As impressive as this foresight of Pickle Inspector's was, it was also very annoying. He sat down at the table across from the Inspector and took a sip of the coffee.

Surprisingly, it was Pickle Inspector who spoke first. "That shopkeeper called me because he was robbed and the police won't take him seriously."

Diamonds rolled his eyes. "The authorities in this town never take anything seriously." Pickle Inspector ogled him reproachfully. "It wasn't me, if that's what you're attempting to imply with that look."

"The police did review the security tapes, perhaps simply as a platitude, and there was no suspect shown." Pickle Inspector frowned. "They dismissed the case immediately thereafter." Diamonds' jab at the authorities was disturbingly accurate.

Diamonds looked nonplussed for a moment, then suggested, "Perhaps the tape was doctored."

Pickle Inspector shook his head. "It isn't I checked." While Pickle Inspector hadn't, strictly speaking, looked at the physical tape, he knew the members of the police department who had viewed it very well, and he knew that they could spot doctored security tape. If the tape had been doctored, the police would have simply told the shop keeper that and dismissed the case anyway, sighting the impracticality of fingerprinting a public place. Of course there were ways around that, but the police in Midnight had bigger fish to fry. So Pickle Inspector knew the tape hadn't been doctored, either way.

Diamonds Droog didn't question his statement. Instead, he took another sip of coffee, then said, "talk to Hanna. That kid is well versed in any paranormal kleptomaniacs that might be ravaging the city."

Pickle Inspector frowned. "Who is Hanna?"

"That ginger who's always hanging around Doctor Worth's sad excuse for a clinic." Diamonds clarified.

The Inspector's mind began to whirl. In their line of work, a visit to the hospital would be out of the question, even if they were injured. By trailing keeping an eye on Diamonds, Pickle was able to deduce the approximate location of the Midnight Crew's alternative. "And Doctor Worth is the…medical practitio0ner who has his clinic somewhere in the vicinity of Baldric Alley, correct?"

Diamonds took another sip of his coffee. "That's the one." Then, something in Pickles phrasing caught his attention. "You've never actually been to see Worth, have you?"

"Well…no, but…" Pickle trailed off, unsure of how to explain his knowledge of the clinics location.

Luckily, it seemed as if Diamonds didn't particularly care. Droog pulled a pocket watch out of his waistcoat pocket and glanced at it. Quarter to five. There was just enough time. Diamonds stood up, throwing a few crumpled bills on the table for the coffee and the tea. "Come on, I'm going to take you to see Worth. You can ask him where to find Hanna. After that, you're on your own."

Pickle Inspector followed Diamonds, pondering the gangster's habit of helping him out. It did seem to come into play at the weirdest of times. Not that he would turn away the help, especially since this Hanna was the only lead he had. Diamonds led him across town to one of the seedier areas of midnight, then down an alleyway and about halfway along it to a door set in the wall of the building that flanked the passage.

Diamonds opened the door and called out, "Doctor Worth, are you in here?"

Pickle Inspector took the opportunity to look around. The room had most likely had white walls once, but over time, they had become a sort of pale yellowish-brown. The walls were bare, and the room was barren, containing nothing except a desk strewn with papers and an overflowing ashtray, a filing cabinet, a dying plant and a door into what looked like an operating room. There was a noise that sounded like a combination between a growling wolf and a dying walrus. Pickle Inspector cast about for the source of the noise, and saw a leg sticking out from behind the desk.

As they watched, the leg moved back behind the desk and unfolded itself into a man, a stick thin man, one who may have been thinner and paler than pickle inspector, though not as tall, all angles and defensive posture, covered in the grubbiest fur-trimmed lab coat the inspector had ever seen, with deep bags under his eyes and a shock of bleach blonde hair cropped closely to his head. This scarecrow of a man looked at them, and said, "One of you better be fucking dying."

Diamonds ignored the threat inherent in the statement and said, "Inspector, this is Doctor Worth." He turned to the so-called doctor. "We're looking for Hanna."

Worth reached into the pocket of his lab coat and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, from which he removed one and placed it in the corner of his mouth. "Fuck if I know. He hasn't been here since…"

He trailed off as a redheaded young man with black-rimmed glasses and a thick blue sweater came bursting in through the door into the room, holding the dry and shriveled green arm of a decayed corpse. Said corpse was walking behind him, fully dressed, but with his orange sleeve hanging at an awkward angle, indicating a lack of arm. The young man held it out in front of him. "Hey worth, Tyrion's arm fell off again. Can you…" he trailed off when he noticed Diamonds Droog and Pickle Inspector. "Oh, sorry. I didn't realize you had other patients."

Worth pulled a lighter out and lit the end of his cigarette. "I don't. They're lookin' for you for some reason." He put the lighter back and deftly snatched the corpsafied arm out of Hanna's grasp. "Do me a favor an' distract 'em while I stick up whatshisface."

Hanna spun to face Diamonds and Pickle and awkwardly brought on hand behind his head as his undead companion was lead into the back treatment room. Pickle Inspector ogled him for a minute before he began to speak. "I heard you were an expert on paranormal phenomenon."

Hanna grinned. "I'm the best in Midnight. What do you need?" Pickle Inspector watched Diamonds walk out the door as he pondered his answer.

Fifteen minutes later, Hanna's companion had his arm firmly attached, and He, Hanna and Pickle Inspector had headed out to the store that the Inspector had been called to that morning. He had talked to Hanna, and they had agreed to split the fee fifty-fifty. They had just started out from the clinic when Hanna clapped his hands together and said, "Right, so, what happened exactly?"

Pickle Inspector cleared his throat. "Well, the shopkeeper says that things have been going missing, and when they looked at the camera, the film didn't show anyone."

Hanna tapped his chin thoughfully. "Doesn't show up on camera, huh. That could be a vampire, but the clothes would show up, and something human sized would have a hard time getting in and out. Plas that doesn't sound like a vampire's M.O. There are a lot of other things that don't show up in mirrors or on Camera though. What's been going missing?"

Pickle Inspector thought for a minute. "All…all sorts of things." He hesitated, then added, "Always things he was about to sell out of though." He remembered the shopkeeper complaining about that. At the time, he had assumed that there was a high probability it was a coincidence, though he had not been considering supernatural qualifications.

Hanna pursed his lips. "That sounds like a poltergeist, but poltergeists always show up on camera, it's the naked eye they're invisible to." He turned to his companion. "Is there anything else you can think of that does the same thing as poltergeists, Stannis?"

The undead man raised one eyebrow, "Gremlins?"

Hanna frowned. "Yeah, but gremlins show up on…the magnetic ones don't though." He turned to Pickle Inspector. "Did you get a good look at the ceiling?"

Pickle Inspector blinked at Hanna's sudden addressing of him. "Um…well…" he thought back, then said. "The ceiling was freshly painted, with no cracks." He wondered if that implicated or excluded whatever creature the redhead had in mind.

The rising excitement in Hanna's voice told him it was implicated. "And there were metal over head light fixtures."

"There were," Pickle Inspector answered.

Hanna grinned. "Then it's probably Magnetic Gremlins. You're a genius Eddard." He hopped up and kissed his companion on the cheek. Pickle came to the conclusion that the man was an amnesiac, based on the way Hanna kept trying different names, and the fact that Worth had referred to him as 'whatshisface'. It seemed like the most likely explanation, especially since he had gone through the trauma of dying. The expression on the man's face told him that the undead man would have been blushing if he had any blood left.

Hanna let out a whoop and went to run forward, but was stopped after less than a foot by his companion, who pointed to a street running perpendicular to the one they were walking on and said, "You could have been hit by a car crossing that street if you weren't careful."

Hanna pouted up at the man. "I wouldn't have crossed without looking both ways, silly. I'm not that dumb, Jamie." None-the-less, he took his companion's hand.

The exorcism turned out to be a simple matter of a chalk circle and a little chanting on Hanna's part, and the twitchy shopkeeper was so grateful, especially when his missing items appeared again, that he offered to pay both Hanna and Pickle Inspector the full fee. Hanna skipped off hand in hand with his companion after, but Pickle Inspector lingered and looked across the street.

Given that it was eight o'clock, the midnight crew would be out and about. In fact, there was a very high probability that Diamonds Droog was watching him right now, given his earlier concern. Pickle Inspector decided to test his theory. He pulled his notebook out of his pocket and wrote '3 o'clock tomorrow' on the next blank page, then held it up so that anyone watching him could read it. It would be rather nice to have afternoon tea with the gangster, even if they were technically on opposite sides.


End file.
